This workshop introduced participants to On the Road to Family-Driven Care, a training curricula developed by the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health. This curriculum, intended for all stakeholders in the children’s mental health arena, is designed to provoke thought and dialogue regarding the family movement’s progress and provide tools to promote true empowerment. Modules addressed the historical context of family-driven care in mental health reform, the continuum of family involvement and accompanying barriers, concepts of systems change, and how they relate to family-driven care, and indicators of readiness for change at the community, provider, policy and personal levels.

Supporting Implementation of EBPS: A Policy Discussion Among Providers, Administrators, Researchers, and Purveyors

Implementing evidence-based practices (EBPs) holds the promise of improving outcomes for children, youth, and families. But doing so consistently will require significant collaboration among providers; local, state and federal administrators; EBP developers; and local purveyors. In this session, individuals representing these key roles presented their view of what each partner needs to do to support implementation of EBPs — and improve the quality of care received by children and families.

Concept Mapping: A Next Generation Strategy for Planning and Evaluating Systems Change

Workshop participants were introduced to concept mapping, which is a statistically-based strategy for engaging community partners in planning for change and for evaluating the progress of the change process. The participants experienced the steps in concept mapping and learn how each step shapes the products of concept mapping. They learned how the products can be used for 1) community inspired planning, 2) the development of the logic model, and 3) evaluation. Lenore Behar and Marty Hydaker described the concept mapping process, the statistical analyses, and lead the participants in the experiential aspects of the workshop. Andrea Aderton, Cathy Baxter, Mona Gauthier, and John Reiss discussed how their communities used concept mapping for planning, logic model development, and evaluation.

This session informed participants about SAMHSA's new Implementation Resource Kit, a tool that participants can use to select evidence-based interventions for youth in their communities. Facilitators provided an overview of the tools and features of the Resource Kit, and provide hands-on experience through a group exercise. Each group utilized the model to assess relevant information and select an intervention. Each group reported on their decision-making process, guided discussion helped participants identify and explore the levels of decision-making and issues affecting choices, including age group considerations, and stakeholder perspectives.

Assessing the Emotional and Behavioral Strengths of Children and Youth

The purpose of the workshop: to orient the participant to strength based assessment. The workshop covered the following topics: First 1) the principles, definition and advantages of strength based assessment will be discussed; 2) informal and formal approaches to strength based assessment will be presented and practiced; 3) the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale, a standardized norm referenced measure of children's strength. Finally, applied examples of how strength based assessment can be used for planning and outcome evaluation was presented and discussed.

This intensive workshop provided training on how to use theory of change logic models to create and support locally driven systems of care. The workshop was based on two actual experiences from the field and conducted by representatives from two systems of care communities. Lessons learned regarding the theory of change building process were shared. Of particular focus was regarding how the approach has supported community ownership, evaluation, and strategic planning. Trainers described how they keep their local system’s strategy alive through the use of logic models. Attendees learned the importance of having a clear vision and plan to the ability of a community to initiate and sustain a system of care.